Falls in The Forest
Natalie Dormer likes a ‘ thinking person’s horror movie’
NEW YORK• Natalie Dormer has a notable fan base thanks to her connection with two blockbuster franchises.
The 33- year- old played propaganda filmmaker Cressida in the hit young adult scifi films The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — parts 1 and 2 and defined the ever- adaptable Margaery Tyrell on the HBO series Game of Thrones.
Next up for Dormer is the supernatural thriller The Forest in which she portrays twins Sara and Jess. It is Sara who desperately searches for her suicidal sister Jess in a haunted Japanese woodland near Mount Fuji.
Despite the mind-altering paranormal activities around her, Sara forges ahead with some unexpected and terrifying results.
While the scares might be jarringly familiar, the tone and structure of The Forest gives the movie a uniqueness that hooked the British actress. She also appreciated the fact that the Aokigahara Forest in question had a long history of ghostly occurrences leading to tragic suicidal consequences, and does to this day.
So the film combines the real with the otherworldly. “It’s a thinking person’s horror movie,” says Dormer, promoting the film. “And it’s more of a suspense thriller at the beginning, and I like that.”
In fact, circumstances and situations may not be what they seem. For instance, the friendly travel writer Aiden ( played by Chicago Fire’s Taylor Kinney), who volunteers to help Sara, may not be as reliable as he pretends to be.
“He smiles way too much with those beautiful blue eyes and you think, ‘ No man is this good,’ ” says Dormer.
Even the twins’ tragic backstory, which is told in flashbacks, may have some flaws.
“It’s the thing of the unreliable narrator,” says the headliner. “Hopefully, the audience gets to a point where they say, ‘ Hang on a minute, is that really there or is it in Sara’s head?’ ”
All things considered, Dormer’s expectation is that “the double whammy” of the movie will cover the genre requirements.
“For horror- movie fanatics, it has the scares and the bumps and the bangs that those people are looking for,” she says. “And those who don’t necessarily like to watch a horror movie can be drawn in because of the human element and the psychological nature of the story.”